Revisiting the Xoom: Examining Jelly Bean on a 10-inch tablet

Can a software update put the zoom back into older hardware?

On Friday, Google began pushing out the promised Jelly Bean update for the Motorola Xoom. While the Nexus 7 is the current watermark for what an Android tablet should be, the Xoom was the first tablet to ship with a version of Android designed for tablets. Many of the features in Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean originated there.

The Xoom is getting a bit long in the tooth and it has never been a big seller, but it’s still the only extant 10-inch Google Experience Device—the phones and tablets that Google chooses with each new Android revision to show off the stock look and feel of the operating system. Older hardware or not, the Xoom running Jelly Bean still represents Google’s standard for how a 10” Android tablet should be done. It will also tell us something about how Jelly Bean will run on older hardware, in the event that Google’s partners actually get on board and push out the update.

Jelly Bean on the Xoom: No surprises here

Jelly Bean on the Galaxy Nexus, Nexus S, and Nexus 7 have all used variations on Android’s phone layout: the Android software buttons across the bottom of the screen, the Google Now bar across the top of the screen, and a persistant dock that stores a few icons and the application drawer. Notifications are accessed by swiping down from the top of the screen, where the network and battery indicators and clock live. When invoked, the application switcher takes over the entire screen.

Rather than switching to a Nexus 7-style smartphone layout, the Xoom’s Jelly Bean upgrade continues to use the tablet-style layout first introduced in Honeycomb (which itself was originally introduced on this very tablet): software buttons in the lower-left corner, notifications in the lower-right corner, application drawer in the upper-right corner, and Google Now button in the upper-left corner. The application switcher shows up on the left edge of the screen.

Jelly Bean's expanded notifications on the Xoom.

The new keyboard, along with its typing suggestions, also makes the jump to the larger tablet.

Tablet or smartphone, the rest of Jelly Bean’s user interface improvements make the move over to the Xoom without issue—the clean whites and blues of Jelly Bean are far and away more refined and attractive-looking than Honeycomb’s luminescent theming, which always seemed to be trying a bit too hard.

Enlarge/ The Xoom's home screen and application switcher, circa Honeycomb. Tastes may vary, but I find Jelly Bean's cleaner look to be more appealing all around.

Also present: the improved, predictive keyboard; home screen icons and widgets that move automatically to make room for new ones; the Google Now and voice dictation features; the refined Roboto font; and the improved notifications. This is a pleasant change from the state of things on the iOS side of the fence, where even if your device can run the latest operating system it may not get all of the latest features. Voice dictation and Google Now in particular work well on the Xoom. In a fairly quiet room with the tablet held about a foot and a half from my face, the tablet correctly understood every word I said, even “Ars Technica," a phrase that routinely trips up speech-to-text software.

Project Butter: Held back by the hardware

One of Jelly Bean’s other banner features, increased performance, also comes to the Xoom. That is, as long as you properly manage your expectations.

Let’s compare: the Xoom uses NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 T20 SoC. The CPU part of the chip is comprised of two ARM Cortex A9 cores running at 1.0GHz, while the GPU runs at 333MHz and uses four pixel shaders and four vertex shaders (adding up to “eight cores” in NVIDIA parlance). The Nexus 7 uses NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 T30L SoC. The CPU uses four ARM Cortex A9 cores running at 1.3GHz, while the GPU runs at 416MHz and uses eight pixel shaders and four vertex shaders (“twelve cores”). Both tablets use the same 1280x800 resolution for their screens. All of this is a very roundabout, technical way of saying that the Xoom has to push the same number of pixels using a good deal less processing power.

That said, Project Butter does have a noticeable impact on the Xoom. Animations that were occasionally capable of smoothness in Ice Cream Sandwich are now consistently smooth in Jelly Bean—things like flicking from home screen to home screen, opening and navigating the application drawer, and scrolling are consistently less jerky than before. Swiping between home screens using a live wallpaper (something that almost always caused lagginess in Ice Cream Sandwich) is nice and smooth in Jelly Bean. Using an app like CPU Usage Monitor confirms that the CPU clock speed ramps all the way up to 1.0GHz when the screen is touched, one of the lag-reducing optimizations made in Jelly Bean.

There are other places where things remain a bit jerky, owing mostly to the Xoom’s aging hardware. Things like swiping away notifications and open applications are consistently choppy, as are the animations that accompany opening applications from the home screen. This happens every time the actions are performed, indicating that the Xoom’s hardware rather than Jelly Bean is at fault. While these problems are exacerbated a bit by the Xoom’s screen, which is more than a little prone to motion blur, they go to show that Project Butter can only do so much for yesterday’s hardware.

Benchmarks and browsing: Quantitative performance increases

While the emphasis in Jelly Bean is on apparent speed—making Android devices feel faster by reducing lag and increasing the smoothness of transitions and animations—it also gives the Xoom some small but measurable increases in actual speed over Ice Cream Sandwich. These manifest mostly in our graphics and browser benchmarks.

The numbers from Geekbench and Linpack, the two CPU-focused benchmarks we usually run on tablets and smartphones, were more or less identical in both Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean. The numbers from GLBenchmark 2.1.5 tell a slightly different story however.

The scores for GLBenchmark’s Egypt and Pro tests don’t budge much—about 12 and 19 percent, respectively—but the performance increase is measurable and consistent. Whether this increase comes from improvements to Jelly Bean or improvements to the Tegra 2 drivers is difficult to say without more devices to test. Widespread performance improvements would suggest the former while improvements only in Tegra 2 devices would suggest the latter. For now, the upshot is that you ought to expect marginally better framerates on the Xoom in Jelly Bean compared to Ice Cream Sandwich.

The second major improvement is in the built-in browser’s performance. While Chrome is the shipping browser on the Nexus 7, devices like the Xoom and Galaxy Nexus are shipped with the stock Android browser and keep it as the default in Jelly Bean. There aren’t many changes to how it looks and acts, but the new version of Browser does bring much-improved SunSpider scores to the table.

What’s really odd here is that Chrome running in Jelly Bean took a bit longer to complete the test than did the same version of Chrome in Ice Cream Sandwich. Browser, on the other hand, improves its score by a healthy 27 percent, and takes roughly as long to complete the test as the faster Nexus 7 running Chrome.

Despite these improved numbers, Browser in Jelly Bean is still inferior to Chrome in actual usage. When scrolling down the Ars homepage, Browser loaded it more slowly and in large, noticeable chunks. If I scrolled quickly back to the top of the page, I had to wait for Browser to redraw everything even though the page had already been loaded just a few seconds before—neither of these things are problems in Chrome. Browser is still under active development in Android as of Jelly Bean, but benchmarks aside, I hope that Chrome becomes the platform’s default browser sooner rather than later.

Conclusions: The right software in search of the right hardware

The best word to describe Jelly Bean on the Xoom is “consistent.” The look and feel of the operating system is consistent with its look and feel on the Nexus 7 and the Galaxy Nexus, giving us a glimpse of a world where Google had iOS-like control over all aspects of the software experience. The tablet’s performance is more consistent, and while the hardware’s age means there are still some areas where animations remain a bit choppy, even that choppiness is now reliable and repeatable, rather than hit-or-miss as it was before. Again, in a word: consistent.

The biggest fly in the ointment is that the app ecosystem for Android tablets is still pretty bleak. While an app designed for a phone might look passable on the Nexus 7, it continues to look ridiculous on the Xoom’s 10-inch screen.

Twitter on the Xoom: wasting space since 2011.

Even if the Nexus 7 is enough of a success that developers begin targeting it and optimizing their apps for its screen, it still won’t do much for the likes of the Xoom. Apps designed for a 7-inch screen will probably look better on a 10-inch screen, but they still won’t make as good a use of the space available as do iPad apps.

While Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean have made the Xoom a much more capable, complete product than it was when we originally reviewed it, this is still hardware that was developed and released when the first iPad was the primary competition (it shows in the Xoom’s thickness and weight). The Xoom's screen—which has poor contrast ratio, is prone to motion blur, and has (by today's standards) pretty low pixel density—is also a bit of a problem. Jelly Bean should convince even longtime iOS holdouts that Android on a 10-inch tablet can be competitive and even pleasant. Now we just need it to show up on modern hardware.

Promoted Comments

On top of this, Google also just released the factory images for Jelly Bean on the Nexus S. I, for one, am incredibly grateful that I no longer have to wait on the carriers to push it out (which AT&T still hasn't done for ICS, nevermind JB).

I'd be pretty interested in seeing how JB does on a single-core processor, but sadly I don't have access to the hardware. At the very least, you should get better performance than in ICS even if it's not as smooth as the Nexus 7/Galaxy Nexus.

I played around with it. The Nexus S works surprisingly well on JB. Not quite as good as the Galaxy Nexus, but still very usable. It helps that the S had a fairly good GPU for its time, and a relatively low screen resolution.

Actually, its kind of weird, the jump from the S to the GN isn't that great, but the jump from the GN to the N7 is quite large. Makes me wonder if theres something wrong with the JB ROM for my GN, or if Google just screwed up and didn't give the GN enough GPU power

There is a lot of truth in the statement that Android tablet apps are lacking. My favorite Android app, GTasks, recently did an update which looks great and works even better, but broke the widget which resized so nicely on my tablet.

If a very good developer takes a step backwards, that doesn't bode well for the rest if the app space in hands of less proficient developers.

35 Reader Comments

Good thing that Twitter app is there for every reviewer to point at as a problem with Android tablets.

I'm sure he's right about the general point, but man, seriously, does everyone need to use the same app for this? I get the impression that if Twitter pushed out a tablet update suddenly the entire layout issue for Android tablets would be gone.

I agree that there is a problematic attitude among Android developers, in that many of them seem to assume that all Android devices are phones, but I would rather have apps that look a bit silly and wasteful on a big screen than see the app ecosystem fragment into separate "tablet" apps and "phone" apps, and "set top box" apps. An Android app should just be an Android app, and it should adjust to whatever input and output devices it has available.

An app that depends on portability for its primary function probably shouldn't worry too much about looking nice on a 52" TV, but in general, app developers should make as few assumptions as possible about what hardware their app is going to run on. PC developers have been dealing with arbitrary window sizes and screen resolutions, as well as a variety of different input devices for years, and (aside from some full screen games that had issues transitioning to widescreen formats) have generally done a pretty good job of it. There's no reason apps can't have the same versatility on Android.

While an app designed for a phone might look passable on the Nexus 7, they continue to look ridiculous on the Xoom’s 10-inch screen.

The solution here is real simple: Don't use those apps unless there is no alternative that does translate well to a tablet size UI. Don't like the twitter app? Use Tweetcaster or Plume. Don't like the Facebook app? Use Friendcaster or the website. While you are at it, complain to the app vendor and give the app a low rating. For me, its rare that there isn't a tablet friendly app to fill a particular need, you just have to look.

Good thing that Twitter app is there for every reviewer to point at as a problem with Android tablets.

I'm sure he's right about the general point, but man, seriously, does everyone need to use the same app for this? I get the impression that if Twitter pushed out a tablet update suddenly the entire layout issue for Android tablets would be gone.

More like Tim Cook continuing the douche baggery of their competitors Steve did while on stage.

Good thing that Twitter app is there for every reviewer to point at as a problem with Android tablets.

I'm sure he's right about the general point, but man, seriously, does everyone need to use the same app for this? I get the impression that if Twitter pushed out a tablet update suddenly the entire layout issue for Android tablets would be gone.

so, does that mean I can put it on my Asus Transformer TF101 which is also using the "aged" Nvidia Tegra 2 ?

Yes, though there's not an official update out yet. Asus were pretty prompt getting the ICS bump out, so a proper release probably isn't that far away - originally only the prime or better was getting it, but they have promised it for the original tf101 transformer too.

If you don't want to wait and don't mind rooting your transformer, there are cyanogenmod 10 and AOSP stock jellybean versions in the xda developers forums - I'm running AOSP jelly bean on my old tf101 at the moment. Very similar to the article Xoom; noticeably faster than honeycomb and even ICS, though not as nippy throughout as a nexus 7. A big improvement overall, especially if you grab chrome or the Firefox beta, though you will still get noticeable judder on some animations.

Still, for what is two year old hardware, its not bad at all and still makes a decent android netbook. My shiny nexus 7 kicks its butt as a straight tablet though.

To be fair, the official Twitter app on iPad is pretty damn useless in landscape as well.

In landscape on the iPad you get the toolbar, Tweets and then extended content e.g. web pages, videos, photos, etc… I find it tremendously useful to scroll through Tweets while waiting for content to load.

I just did this update over the weekend (actually, I flashed my Canadian Xoom to the US GED firmware, then to 4.1.1---I'd rather not wait a year for Motorola to remove the bootscreen, ship a crippled Gallery and slap on QuickOffice, thanks) and agree with the article.

Some background: going GED required a flash back down to Honeycomb, which offered some, ah, insights.

JB does make an appreciable difference versus ICS---enough that using my Xoom is fun again---specially on the home screen) and is worlds better than Honeycomb. I'd hazard that a large part of the failure of the Android tablet market is how spectacularly bad Honeycomb really is: it was draggy, crash prone and simple tasks like, oh, typing, were incredibly painful. It took the generally-not-too-bad experience of 2.3.x and dragged it through the mud. Combine that with some dicey hardware offerings and OEMs who will never, ever ship an update to 3.0 and the market is, effectively, poisoned.

Honeycomb really strikes me as Google's "Windows ME" moment.

Side note: If you use a Xoom and Netflix, Jelly Bean is worth it for the improvements it makes to the previously-dragtastic interface for that app. I was floored to see how much better it performs.

so, does that mean I can put it on my Asus Transformer TF101 which is also using the "aged" Nvidia Tegra 2 ?

Maybe. There is a version of JB for the Lenovo K1 and an official-ish ICS release for it from Lenovo, but unrooted and without GApps.

Someone has already released a rooted version of that ROM, but you apparently need to make it look like a Xoom to Google Play in order to actually install apps form the market. I'm not sure if that will be fixed or not, I haven't checked the threads since Friday.

I'm sure there's still a bit more tweaking that Google can provide to the Xoom with JB. I've had JB on my rooted Xoom since just after the official announcement of JB, albeit with a custom kernel, and I haven't experienced the lag mentioned by Andrew. The Xoom continues to be the 2nd most used electronic device in my house.

I just did this update over the weekend (actually, I flashed my Canadian Xoom to the US GED firmware, then to 4.1.1---I'd rather not wait a year for Motorola to remove the bootscreen, ship a crippled Gallery and slap on QuickOffice, thanks) and agree with the article.

Some background: going GED required a flash back down to Honeycomb, which offered some, ah, insights.

JB does make an appreciable difference versus ICS---enough that using my Xoom is fun again---specially on the home screen) and is worlds better than Honeycomb. I'd hazard that a large part of the failure of the Android tablet market is how spectacularly bad Honeycomb really is: it was draggy, crash prone and simple tasks like, oh, typing, were incredibly painful. It took the generally-not-too-bad experience of 2.3.x and dragged it through the mud. Combine that with some dicey hardware offerings and OEMs who will never, ever ship an update to 3.0 and the market is, effectively, poisoned.

Honeycomb really strikes me as Google's "Windows ME" moment.

Side note: If you use a Xoom and Netflix, Jelly Bean is worth it for the improvements it makes to the previously-dragtastic interface for that app. I was floored to see how much better it performs.

There were enough issues with it that Google didn't post Honeycomb code to AOSP until Ice Cream Sandwich was out. That alone speaks volumes, IMO.

1. Apple's "investing" in Twitter supposedly, but if not they are at least in Apple's most-favored-partner status. Twitter owes Apple allegiance. 2. Twitter ignores Android tablets, for no good reason. 3. Apple-positive commenters always bring up the Twitter app despite the existence of worthy Android tablet alternatives they could point to.

so, does that mean I can put it on my Asus Transformer TF101 which is also using the "aged" Nvidia Tegra 2 ?

I think there are already unofficial ROMs, but recently Asus announced they will be upgrade the Tegra 3-based Transformers to JB (that is, Prime, Infinity and the el-cheapo version... TF300, I think?). So those will at least get the update soon-ish. But, as the modifications Asus adds to Android are rather minor, I see no reason why they would not upgrade the original Transformer as well, given that it seems to run passably on Tegra 2 too.

(But, if you can justify it to yourself, do try the Infinity. I have the original Transformer as well, and while gadget lust is an infinite resource, I couldn't rationalize upgrading to Infinity. That is, until my 5-year old threw a stone at the old TF101. Gorilla glass or whatnot, but there is a scratch on the screen. Barely visible depending on the angle, but it is there at any rate. Oh well, she'll get it as a present for her sixth birthday, and I finally got a tablet with a sunlight-readable screen)

1. Apple's "investing" in Twitter supposedly, but if not they are at least in Apple's most-favored-partner status. Twitter owes Apple allegiance. 2. Twitter ignores Android tablets, for no good reason. 3. Apple-positive commenters always bring up the Twitter app despite the existence of worthy Android tablet alternatives they could point to.

Causation with correlation, IMHO.

You might go back to your news sources and read them a bit more carefully. Apple & Twitter seem to have talked six or maybe 12 months ago, leading to … well, no investment. A couple of links built into iOS 6 and MacOS 10.8, we're told. The sort of stuff that Google could easily do if it wanted to promote the Twitter social aspect. Right? Which it doesn't, right?

Android tablet users aren't the only ones who find Twitter's apps buggy and awkward. But the article's point is that otherwise obvious choices for apps are awkward on tablets that they weren't tweaked for. People who don't like this example could maybe say something about how well Android apps are tweaked for 10" tablets.

1. Apple's "investing" in Twitter supposedly, but if not they are at least in Apple's most-favored-partner status. Twitter owes Apple allegiance. 2. Twitter ignores Android tablets, for no good reason. 3. Apple-positive commenters always bring up the Twitter app despite the existence of worthy Android tablet alternatives they could point to.

Causation with correlation, IMHO.

Let me challenge your hypothesis:1) and 2) Is there evidence that Apple has invested in Twitter? Not that I know of. The reason for the huge differences between Android and iOS (tablet) apps is that Apple has set quite strict rules for designing and developing apps for iOS and for publishing them on the App Store. Google has set some basic guidelines for developing apps for Android, but they are not enforced and there's no app review prior to publishing apps on the Google Play (formerly known as Android Market).

3. It's not only pro-Apple people who point out the negative sides of the Android app experience, developers are having a hard time developing for Android too. IMHO, the first problem is fragmentation (yes, it exists). The second is the whole layout mess -- developers have to design separate layouts for phones, tablets, screen orientations and different screen densities. Read more about it here. iOS has none of these problems. Over 92% of all devices are running the latest OS. There's no need to mess with numerous layouts -- there's one storyboard for iPhone and one for iPad. iOS scales automatically for non-retina and retina screens, provided that the @2x graphics are included in the project.

On top of this, Google also just released the factory images for Jelly Bean on the Nexus S. I, for one, am incredibly grateful that I no longer have to wait on the carriers to push it out (which AT&T still hasn't done for ICS, nevermind JB).

The second is the whole layout mess -- developers have to design separate layouts for phones, tablets, screen orientations and different screen densities.

While I don't deny that Android certainly has more configurations to accommodate, it also seems to work quite well at least with different DPIs. Now, this is purely from a user perspective - I've dabbled a bit with Android development, really getting into it is on my ever-growing list of "things to do when I have the time and energy outside paid work", which sadly seems to be never as of late. And I don't use Twitter, so I can't comment on that. But the tablet-oriented apps (such as Pulse and Evernote) I used previously on the original Transformer (10", 1280x800) look pretty much identical on Infinity (10", 1920x1200). That is, the physical dimensions are the same, but everything is crispier. Which is kind of cool really, as it is not a direct 2x upscaling.

Now, I'm not denying fragmentation is an issue with Android. Being a semi-open platform, it can't be helped. But also it seems, developers willing, the design allows for rather flexible layouts.

On top of this, Google also just released the factory images for Jelly Bean on the Nexus S. I, for one, am incredibly grateful that I no longer have to wait on the carriers to push it out (which AT&T still hasn't done for ICS, nevermind JB).

I'd be pretty interested in seeing how JB does on a single-core processor, but sadly I don't have access to the hardware. At the very least, you should get better performance than in ICS even if it's not as smooth as the Nexus 7/Galaxy Nexus.

I'd be pretty interested in seeing how JB does on a single-core processor, but sadly I don't have access to the hardware. At the very least, you should get better performance than in ICS even if it's not as smooth as the Nexus 7/Galaxy Nexus.

I had few problems with ICS on the Nexus S, and fewer still with JB (so far; it has admittedly only been a few hours). They actually both seem to make the phone run better than on Gingerbread. With ICS, the only time I really ran into hiccups was that terrible loading animation when starting the phone up. I haven't played with the newer devices, so maybe I just don't know what I'm missing, but I'm perfectly satisfied with the performance of the Nexus S today.

so, does that mean I can put it on my Asus Transformer TF101 which is also using the "aged" Nvidia Tegra 2 ?

Yes, though there's not an official update out yet. Asus were pretty prompt getting the ICS bump out, so a proper release probably isn't that far away - originally only the prime or better was getting it, but they have promised it for the original tf101 transformer too.

Satisfied owner of a TF101 here - anyone have a link to where Asus has promised Jelly Bean for the OG Transformer? Everything I've read so far has said the Prime and after are definitely getting JB, but that Asus is "still making up their mind" about JB for the TF101. Which generally means "not getting it" in the end. Although Asus has been GREAT about updates for the TF101, so I generally give them the benefit of the doubt. But if they do decide not to release it, or take their sweet time about it, it might be the prodding I need to finally root and install a custom ROM. I've kept it stock so far, mostly because I haven't run into a compelling need to become non-stock.

There is a lot of truth in the statement that Android tablet apps are lacking. My favorite Android app, GTasks, recently did an update which looks great and works even better, but broke the widget which resized so nicely on my tablet.

If a very good developer takes a step backwards, that doesn't bode well for the rest if the app space in hands of less proficient developers.

On top of this, Google also just released the factory images for Jelly Bean on the Nexus S. I, for one, am incredibly grateful that I no longer have to wait on the carriers to push it out (which AT&T still hasn't done for ICS, nevermind JB).

I'd be pretty interested in seeing how JB does on a single-core processor, but sadly I don't have access to the hardware. At the very least, you should get better performance than in ICS even if it's not as smooth as the Nexus 7/Galaxy Nexus.

I played around with it. The Nexus S works surprisingly well on JB. Not quite as good as the Galaxy Nexus, but still very usable. It helps that the S had a fairly good GPU for its time, and a relatively low screen resolution.

Actually, its kind of weird, the jump from the S to the GN isn't that great, but the jump from the GN to the N7 is quite large. Makes me wonder if theres something wrong with the JB ROM for my GN, or if Google just screwed up and didn't give the GN enough GPU power

Having used Honeycomb and ME quality wise that is an insult to Windows ME. However, ME was a real version of Windows that everyone was expected to use. Honeycomb was an alpha thingy that Google said they would only release on a few tablets. They were obviously using it as a test ground for new ideas. And boy, did that strategy work. ICS is a joy to use. Personally, I don't know why iPhone's remain as popular as they are after ICS's release. It must be inertia.

Good thing that Twitter app is there for every reviewer to point at as a problem with Android tablets.

I'm sure he's right about the general point, but man, seriously, does everyone need to use the same app for this? I get the impression that if Twitter pushed out a tablet update suddenly the entire layout issue for Android tablets would be gone.

If you go to like about:debug you can open up options to change the user agent string in the browser options to bypass the twitter mobile site.

Also I take umbrage to the Xoom being called older or slower or whatever. I'm still proudly rocking my Sony Tablet S with similar hardware on Jellybean and it never misses a beat. For one I highly doubt the the average android app is optimized for dual core let alone quad core, and the marginal 1.3 from 1.0ghz speed boost is nothing to write home about. The only place I see Tegra 3 devices really offering something is in the GPU but even that is debatable for day to day use.

Andrew Cunningham / Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue.